Minerva Rising is an independent literary press, celebrates the creativity and wisdom in every woman by giving them space to tell their stories and to tell them well. This year’s contest embodies and embraces the theme“Dare to Speak” by opening up the Minerva Rising annual chapbook contest to writers whose voices have been suppressed. If your poetry speaks a message that has never been heard before, the Universe is ripe to listen. Now is the season to Dare.

Writers are invited to submit 14-36 pages of a chapbook-length poetry manuscript (along with a table of contents and acknowledgements page) to Minerva Risingby December 1, 2017. Winner receives $250 and 10 copies of chapbook. More information on contest available here. Submission fee is $20. Applications open at minervarising.submittable.com.

Rita Banerjee is the editor of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, March 2018) and the author of the poetry collection Echo in Four Beats (Finishing Line Press, February 2018), which was a finalist for the Red Hen Press Benjamin Saltman Award, Three Mile Harbor Poetry Prize, and Aquarius Press / Willow Books Literature Award, the novella “A Night with Kali” in Approaching Footsteps (Spider Road Press, 2016), and the poetry chapbook Cracklers at Night (Finishing Line Press, 2010). She received her doctorate in Comparative Literature from Harvard and her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington, and her writing appears in the Academy of American Poets, Poets & Writers,Nat. Brut., The Scofield, The Rumpus, Painted Bride Quarterly, Mass Poetry, Hyphen Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric Literature, VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, AWP WC&C Quarterly, Queen Mob’s Tea House, Riot Grrrl Magazine, The Fiction Project, Objet d’Art, KBOO Radio’s APA Compass, and elsewhere. She is the Executive Creative Director of the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop and teaches at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in Germany. She is currently working on a documentary film about race, voyeurism, and intimacy in the United States and in France, a novel about a Tamil-Jewish American family in crisis during a post-authoritarian regime, and a collection of essays on race, sex, politics, and everything cool.

The Cambridge Writers’ Workshop wishes everyone out there a very frightening, eery, and Happy Halloween! May your #Halloween be filled with ghosts, goblins, creepy monsters, and lots of strange undead things. In the spirit of Halloween, we’re running a little #contest. Please tweet us your best Halloween costumes @CamWritersWkshp, and best-dressed will win a free retreat day at our Nov 22/23 Pre-Thanksgiving #Yoga & #CreativeWriting Cleanse in New York! You have until November 2 to send us your best #Halloween or #DayoftheDead costumes! Costumes can be from the present year or any year prior. Just tweet us your pic, your first name, costume pic, and where your pic was taken @CamWritersWkshp by November 2, 2014 and follow our contest on #BestHalloweenCostumes !!